Page 5 - beyond-good-and-evil

gle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of
Christianity (FOR CHRISITIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR
THE ‘PEOPLE’), produced in Europe a magnificent ten-
sion of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously;
with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the
furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this
tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been
made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of
Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic en-
lightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press
and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that
the spirit would not so easily find itself in ‘distress’! (The
Germans invented gunpowder-all credit to them! but they
again made things square—they invented printing.) But we,
who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even sufficiently
Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free
spirits—we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the
tension of its bow! And perhaps also the arrow, the duty,
and, who knows? THE GOAL TO AIM AT….

Sils Maria Upper Engadine, JUNE, 1885.

Beyond Good and Evil